"we have revived our store rollout"
Beauty retailer Nykaa has revealed that it plans to triple the number of its stores in India.
Founder and Chief Executive Falguni Nayar said that she hoped to increase the number of physical shops to 300, a significant move in raising the primarily e-commerce brand’s offline presence.
While she did not provide a timeline for the rollout, Nayar said that the company was aiming to open up in 100 cities across the country on top of the 48 outlets already in operation across 40 cities.
The CEO told Reuters: “The process of store expansion had slowed down due to the pandemic for a year or so.
“But this year we have revived our store rollout.”
Despite the rapid increase of e-commerce through the likes of online retailers such as Amazon, most Indian shoppers still tend to buy products offline in the country’s £680 billion retail market.
Nykaa has said that it is targeting a sub-sector of that industry, the £52 billion beauty, personal care and fashion market, as they also sell clothes and accessories such as jewellery.
Like the majority of other retailers, the brand was hit hard by Covid-19 amid the rise of work-from-home rules which meant that there was a reduced demand for the likes of office wear, cosmetics and shoes.
The company reported a massive 96% slump in quarterly profit in November 2020 due to the pandemic but is hoping to gain pace as India slowly opens up and the festive season gets underway.
Nayar said:
“Clearly there is a revival in make-up which was pre-pandemic.”
The company has received a lot of public attention in recent months after a stock market debut with a valuation of £10 billion.
Top equity firms along with Bollywood stars Alia Bhatt and Katrina Kaif have financially backed the brand’s parent company.
Nayar, a 58-year-old former investment banker, launched the e-commerce platform in 2012 and has recently become India’s newest self-made billionaire joining only six other female billionaires in the country.
Nykaa, which sources many products from Europe, is also focusing on ramping up exports of its own private brands to the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
However, Nayar noted that India remains the priority due to its massive growth potential.
She said many Indians are “yet to buy their first watch, first car, first home – I think India is in a very different place compared to other developed economies”.
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